Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/40

24 April, 1665, they would appear to have seen one another for the first time. They met at the Duke’s Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields during the performance of Mustapha, a tragedy, by the Earl of Orrery, in which Betterton played the part of Solyman, Harris that of Mustapha, and Mrs. or Miss Davis that of the Queen of Hungaria. Great care had been taken to produce this now long-forgotten tragedy with the utmost magnificence. All the parts were newly clothed, and new scenes had been painted expressly for it. Yet we are told by Pepys that "all the pleasure of the play" was in the circumstance that the King and my Lady Castlemaine were there, and that he sat next to "pretty witty Nell at the King's House" and to the younger Marshall, another actress at the same theatre—a circumstance, he adds, with his usual quaint honesty of remark, "which pleased me mightily." Yet the play was a good one in Pepys's eyes. Nine months later he calls it "a most excellent play;" and when he saw it again, after an interval of more than two years, he describes it as one he liked better the more he saw it:—"a most-admirable poem and bravely acted." His after entries therefore more than confirm the truth of his earlier impressions. The